Conan O’Brien Needs A Friend - Charlie Day

Episode Date: May 1, 2023

Actor, writer, and producer Charlie Day feels euphoric about being Conan O’Brien’s friend. Charlie sits down with Conan to chat about his Rhode Island upbringing, committing himself to absurdity on It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia, and satirizing Hollywood in his new film Fool’s Paradise. Later, Conan reassures a listener with fears about the threat Conan poses to his marriage. For Conan videos, tour dates and more visit TeamCoco.com.

Hi, my name is Charlie Day and I feel euphoric about being Conan O'Brien's very best friend in the entire universe. Well, wait a minute. Hello and welcome to Conan O'Brien Needs a Friend. I've got a fine podcast for you today. I never promise anything I can't deliver. That's actually not true. I'm actually known for promising a lot and delivering very little.

But I sit here with my companions, my chums, my pals. Sonia Moisesian. Hello, Sonia. Yes. Hello. Hello. And Matt Gorley. Now, Matt, I'm told that you're a little loopy today because you're on some kind of powerful

medication. What's going on? I mean, look at him. You've got a very different posture than normal. Seriously, what's happening? What's up, groove bones? Yes, groove bones, the name I've always wished I had. Well, I found out I have tennis elbow and so they put me on some anti-inflammatories

that make me feel pretty good. Okay. Can you tell me exactly what the medication is? Indomethacin. Does that sound familiar? That was outlawed years ago. Hey, you're funny. Yeah.

What's tennis elbow? I'm sure everybody knows what it is. I didn't know. I mean, I've heard it, but it's just I think it's an inflammation of the tendons in your elbow. Right. No. Why would you call it tennis elbow?

Okay. What have you been doing? What do you want me to call it? Collecting old typewriter's elbow? Yes. Do you have you been overusing that arm? I cleared everything out of our garage by myself, box after box. Wife threw you out, huh?

Yeah. Again, that's what it... So, okay. Well, so you're on these powerful anti-inflammatories. What are these side effects? Do you feel? Drowsiness. Drowsiness.

Okay. What? Feel that. Okay. Are you going to be able to drive home? No. Okay. Okay.

Well, give it a shot. Could one of you guys give me a ride? We could easily call you an Uber, but part of me thinks we need things to talk about on the podcast. So, why don't you drive home in this condition and just see what happens. The loopiest I've been, have I told you this? I may have mentioned this, but the first time that I had a procedure and they gave me a twilight drug, mentioned that a few times.

Okay. But did I tell you how my wife had to come pick me up? She had to walk me home and I just was a child. I was a child. I was on this twilight drug and this is in New York and so we had to walk like 15 blocks and she was like holding my hand and leading me back to the apartment like I was a baby. And then I just looked at her at one point and I said, I'm not going to McDonald's. Like a kid would.

Yeah. And so she took me to McDonald's and I was as happy as I've been in my adult life. I would love to go to McDonald's. Yeah. Because there's something about, it was so primal. I just wanted comfort food and I went back to my childhood. Love my wife. She did a nice thing.

She took me to McDonald's and she said, sit here and don't move. I remember that. Don't move. She put you in a booster seat. And I swear to God, she put like a Burger King crown on me or something. Did she get you a happy meal? I don't think she got me a happy meal. I think she got me a quarter pounder and but she got me a shake.

You dip your chicken McNugs in your shake. Is that euphemism? Yeah. You're a freak. Did you put your balls in the shake? Well, I did that. Just be clear is all I'm asking you. Is that a thing people do?

Oh yeah. The nugs in the shake? Yeah. We all dip. Oh, I thought you meant do we dip our balls in the shake? Oh yeah. Do you? That's the common thing.

It's called tea bagging. Yeah. Tea bagging grimace. It's called. The ultimate tea bag himself. Yeah. Is grimace still used? Do they still have the characters that we grew up watching on McDonald's?

Like Hamburglar. They're all gone. Yeah. Remember there were some that actually went away early on because there's Mayor McCheese and there's the police burger guy. Right. But they got rid of them. I love those characters.

Yeah. Yeah. And the fry guys? I know Ronald's gone but they got rid of everybody. Ronald's gone? Ronald's not gone. He's in jail. Well, you don't see him.

No. You don't see him in commercials anymore. Yeah. What? I don't know. I saw him at Costco the other day. Okay. Well.

Hey, man, when you're not as inflamed. Hey, man. Hey, man. Hey, thanks for being here, Chong. Truth. Nice to have you. Truth. Ask me anything.

I'll tell you the truth. I'm happy to tell you. You know, this is just an anti-inflammatory. You're not on LSD. This is just. Such a lightweight. You're such a lightweight. It's incredible.

This is taking me back to when we did the summer s'mores and you had a little bit of a drink and started trying to kiss me on my left nipple. You literally have the equivalent of a rum-flavored cough drop, and now you've got your hand on my upper thigh. Oh, my God. Joe, who works here at the show and is working in this very room often, Joe today asked me seriously. She said, are you on Adderall?

Because she's so cool. And she said to me. She said. And she wasn't joking. She said, are you on Adderall? And I said, no. And she said, okay. So what is it?

And I said, no, this is because she was talking about how energetic and talkative I am. And I said, this is just who I am. And she went, okay, okay. She asked if I was on Adderall. She said, well, I want to try and be a little more like you when I said, because Joe is so cool. She is cool. She is so cool and laid back and kind of effortlessly, like when you're like that, everyone thinks

you're the coolest person in the room. And she said, Joe, you don't want to be like me, I want to be like you. And I can't. But she asked me if I was on Adderall. I was shocked when I found out your comedy comes from a sober place. I thought like your writer's room was just like, you guys are all lighting up joints and you're just like, you know, and I'm like, oh, that's coming from a real sober place. Not a healthy place, but a sober place.

Yeah, I know. You make perfect. Oh, I'm sorry. I think Matt just fell asleep. He did not. You're fine. How long we've been going? Well, we've been going a little while.

What are we on? But anyway, I think we realized an important thing, which is we all love different kinds of fast food. I'll go with Wendy's. And that you are a lightweight and that your minutes from your heart stopping you need to get. I mean, you are really looping out right now. Did you just snort out stuff from your face?

You made me snot. I made you snot? No. How long? I didn't know. You manufactured the mucus, and maybe I said something that made you expel it from your nose, but I didn't make you snot. You.

How long? How long does tennis elbow last? I hope a long time. Oh, my God, this is a different man. I don't know about this guy. I'm enjoying it. Well, I want. I'm going to go to my doctor tonight and say I've got tennis elbow.

You know what I'm going to do? I'm going to go out and buy a brand new tennis racket. It's going to still have the price tag on it. And I'll go and go, I've got tennis elbow. I need the anti-inflammatory. Oh, doc. Hello. And they'll say, why are you holding that racket?

It hasn't even been taken out of the packaging yet. I was on the court. I really had a good game. We got to talk. We got to talk to a guest, you know? Not got to, get to, because I love this guy. My guest today, talented actor and writer. You better wait.

Have a cup of coffee or something there, gorelly. You're going to snap out of this. Okay, buddy. My guest today is very talented actor and writer, best known for playing Charlie Kelly on the long running FX series. It's always sunny in Philadelphia. Sona, you have built shrines to this show. I absolutely love this show so much.

Yeah, as many people do. He also has a new movie which he wrote, directed, and stars in called Fool's Paradise in theaters May 12th. I'm excited he's here with us. Charlie Day, welcome. I'm delighted you're here. I'm thrilled to be here. Charlie, you've, someone just reminded me that you did The Late Night Show a bunch of times

or some incarnation of one of the shows, but I think nine times, which I say is too many. That shows a neediness on your part. But you kept having me in, which I appreciated. To get to, I know we're ready for the jokes, we want to get into it, full seriousness. My absolute favorite talk show ever to be on, I think you were the first one. If it wasn't the first one I did, it was the first one that I felt like I did correctly. Because in my mind, you were my Johnny Carson, top of the mountaintop.

And now that you've quit, I resent you. And I'm forced to do all the other people, all the lesser than. Oh, well, that's very sweet of you to say. I think we have a bunch of things in common, which is, it's so funny, because my introduction to It's Always Sunny in Philadelphia was Sona, my erstwhile assistant, coming in and screaming at me. I didn't see It's Always Sunny last night. And I say, no, I didn't see it last night.

I didn't see. And her, just her whole, what I used to do at the late night show was make sure of the way Stalin did, that there were images of me everywhere, just magazine covers and everything was Conan. And then you'd get to Sona's part of the office and it was all It's Always Sunny. Just pretty much that whole area. It was a lot of, there's fun pictures, like promo pictures and stuff, but yeah, you're making me sound kind of crazy.

No, but you also, you have great comedic taste, in my opinion, and you were right about. And I always felt you guys collectively, guys gal, that you have this, I don't know, similar philosophy about making people laugh that made me very happy, which was just this, things could get very anarchic and crazy, but the show never really took itself very seriously and still hasn't, and there was just a pure raw, we're going to have fun and, and make fools of ourselves if need be. I think we're in the business, the very serious business of how ridiculous can we be. Which isn't as easy as just saying, okay, let's go goof off, like we'll put an extraordinary

amount of work and thought and conversation into the most ridiculous thing. Yes. Yes. Also, we may have learned a lot of this from you, you may be partly irresponsible. Well, that's the point I'm getting to, I think there's a cut of the, of the royalties that I would have. Yeah, yeah. No.

Talk to Robin Glenn, because I think they, I'm sure I'll get very far. It's a funny dichotomy that I talk to people about, which is, I'm two things, very silly, and I love abstract foolishness taken to its extreme, and I'm also deadly, deadly serious about it. And you understand that the two things coexist, because I think there are a lot of people who think, oh, the always sunny guys, if you, you know, if you hung out in their writer's room or if you hung out with them, it's just clowning all the time. And I know for a fact that no, there were probably very, very heated arguments about

how the really stupid thing should happen. We got, we got in one this year, 16 years into doing the show, and a good sort of heated debate about this is the way to do it, and this is the way to do it. We do it every single, it's exhausting. It's exhausting. But it's all that sort of arguing and planning so that you can have that, you know, 15 minutes of just raw, funny, which is like, are we all agree that this is the best scenario for something to be funny and now just let it rip, because we feel sort of safe, like we've

built up the work around it, and here's a playground with which to destroy sandcastles. But yeah. Yeah. Well, we have, going back, we have a bunch of things in common. You grew up in Rhode Island, and I kind of grew up in Rhode Island, because. Explain. Yeah. Yeah.

You're one foot in Rhode Island. I used to drive there every night and spend an hour on a dock with a seagull and a fisherman. From childhood every day it was important. My dad insisted. Yeah. Massachusetts. Yeah. I'm from Massachusetts, from Brookline, right outside Boston, and then we didn't have a summer

house growing up, and we would go and stay at my grandfather's house, which was in Miss Quamacut, Rhode Island, right next to the state beach. So we were, you know, he was a retired policeman. We would hang out at his house and then walk down to the state beach. I would hang around Rhode Island, and sometimes we would hang around there for a month to two months in the summer. And so I got a really good dose of the Rhode Island vibe, and I have to say, I mean, it's funny because it's a very strong accent.

People complained about the Boston accent, the Rhode Island accent. You start to tip into New York in Rhode Island, where it kind of mashes the two. Yeah. And my favorite is I once stopped in Cranston, Rhode Island, Cranston. And I got out of my car to fill up my tank of gas, and I had my hat on just to try and like, I just want to, this is, you know, years and years into the late night show, just going to fill up with gas. And this woman, like in an acid wash jacket, got out of her Jeep, and she walked up to

me and she was giving me the look like, you can't hide from me. And she went, I sported, yeah, I sported, yeah, you're trying to hide. You think you're a big shot now, huh? Yeah. And I thought, man, that's Cranston, Rhode Island. Yeah. Cranston especially is pretty thick. I would get a lot of, I'd go home and I'd get a lot of that.

And my friend's father, he's a carpenter in Rhode Island, Portuguese Rhode Island, tough as nails. And I'd start coming home and he'd say, what's up, Kevin? And I started thinking, oh no, he's starting to, his nickname was Peach. Yeah. He's starting to lose it a little bit. And then I realized he was calling me Kevin because he started calling me, here comes Cosna.

So. So. What? So. Just because you had had success. Yes. You are now Kevin Cosna. Yeah.

And an actor to him is only Kevin Costner. Actors and acting stops. That's hilarious. It comes Cosna. Oh, it comes Cosna. I go, should I wash my car for him? But yeah. So Kevin Costner is where actors begin again.

That's hilarious. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. And if something's good, he has a language of his own. This guy's language is also, if something's good, it's clean. So he was like, you know, right now, he probably, if I saw him, he'd be like, I heard that Super Mario brother is pretty big.

That's clean brother. Yeah. Clean is good. Clean is positive. Yeah. And you know, if it came out in tanked, he'd be like, I saw your movie. Suspect. Clean and suspect.

Clean and suspect. Are they two? That's the only two words you really need. Yeah. Those are both like criminal terms. I know. I love that. He's clean.

He's a suspect. Yeah. Well, that sums up Rhode Island for you. Yeah. That is hilarious. Yeah. I was in Westerly, you know, do you know the town of Westerly at all? And I was in Westerly, Rhode Island, and this is about, I don't know, like eight years

ago when I was with my mom and my brother, Neil. And we were in this restaurant. It was a Portuguese kind of Italian restaurant and we're in there and we're having our meal and the waitress recognized me and I could see her looking at me and then she, she went out back and I guess made a phone call and then she came out in this very thick accent that I can't really do. But she was like, I talked to the manager and he's, here's the deal. If you would come back and do two days of like signing autographs and we could, we could,

we could publicize it, you know, kind of, kind of know Brian's going to be here and he's going to do two days and he's going to sign autographs and you greet everyone at their table. If you could do that for two days, dinner's on us. So how'd it go? For real? Yes. Dinner's on us.

And I was just thinking like, I so want to call my representation in Los Angeles and get them involved and you know, they'll be saying things like, well, wait a minute, no, you're going to send a plane, right? No, no plane, but dinner's included. How much Parmesan? Yeah, yeah. How much Parmesan? Yeah.

And you know that these people would win. Yeah. These people would defeat my representation. The only thing that I would call a clam chatter is on us. We just want two entire days of your time. Yeah. Two days. It was two days, which I thought was really weird.

Like really? Two days? Yeah, yeah. You got two days for one meal. It's unreal. Yeah. Also, I know that some people would come the first day and then no one would come the second day in West.

Like, you know, you'd pretty much meet everyone that would want to say hi to me in one day. And do you get a free meal each day or is it just one for the two days? They said dinner's on us. They said singular. Singular dinner, yeah. So I don't think I get a dinner the first night, but I do get it the second night. Wow. Or maybe I get it the second night and not the, I mean the first night, but not the

second night. Who knows? That's a real win-win for that, you know. All the publicity. You should have done it. I screwed up. That's a suspect. You should have done it.

So you grew up there and I know, you know, I'm fascinated by a couple of things. People that come from the same part of the world that I do and also, and are obsessed with comedy and also people that have a music connection. I've always been sort of a frustrated music wannabe and I think that there's a very strong connection between music and comedy. And I know that that was part of your childhood because aren't your parents professionals? Both. Well, yeah.

Retired music teachers. But my mom was just, you know, the kindergarten through eighth grade music teacher at a small private school and my dad taught the local college like music history one and two. But their eggheads for sure, they both have their PhDs in musicology. As does my sister in choral conducting. And so I was like, you know, they didn't have any money. So I was like, this is, no, music's not for me. And then I started being like, well, maybe you could be a rock star and that's a different

deal. But then like, I felt like, you know, I could noodle on a lot of instruments and then you meet the one kid who could just shred a guitar and you're like, yeah, I don't, I don't got it. I don't got it. Yes. It, it becomes, it becomes clear pretty quickly. My theory, and I've mentioned to hear a bunch of the podcasts is that when you're a kid,

you have a checklist and whether you're doing it consciously or unconsciously, you're kind of checking out like athlete, in my case, it was athlete, no. You know, lady killer, no, just like a lot of no's and then make, what's the thing at the bottom? I know. What is, what, that's what you wanted to get into, no, just like, you know, no, no, not professional. Like a Jack the Ripper kind of thing.

Yeah. So I was like, what's your persona? Kind of a Ted Bundy kind of thing. Sure. You can still do that. Too messy. Too messy. No, you roam from state to state.

Oh, okay. Yeah. And there's a, no, um, that more, more that what are your assets, I guess is that what I would say? Yeah, for sure. That, I guess that's what I'm talking about. What are your assets? And then you, I finally, I was like, I remember it, no, no, no, no, no.

I seem to be able to make people chuckle. Also, you hit a certain point where you're like, this is the only way I can figure out how to feed myself, like math is off the table, sports, yeah, um, modeling, forget it. But if I can just squeeze a couple of chuckles out of somebody and get by, yeah. You tried for a while going on legitimate acting auditions, but it wasn't really until you started making your own stuff. I knew that it just, it was going to hit a wall. So like both Rob and Glenn and myself, we were working, uh, the way extraordinarily handsome

young men in their 20s can get some work. Sure. I was there. I did that. Yeah. You know, like, like the guy at the dock being like, yeah, I saw him. Yeah. You know.

Yeah, yeah. Yeah. Pretty decent guy. Hard work. And I think I did notice blood on the finger, you know, like that, like that. How many law and orders is that? Yeah. Yeah.

Yeah. That's it. That is my favorite observation is, uh, and it's the same thing for dragnet and law and order. Whenever they're questioning someone, it's like, no, no, anything else you want to say before we go. Oh, there was one thing. Yeah.

Yeah. He wore a World War one German helmet. Yeah. He'd lead with that. I don't know. Whatever you make of that. Yeah. Yeah.

So you did a couple of one line things. I did a law and order and like a couple of things here and there. I was always coming close. I was testing for a lot of TV shows to always to be the best friend, never to be the guy. Yeah. Yeah. Actually, one time I got flown out for a show that was called Weird Henry and they're like, well, maybe he could be Weird Henry.

He sure says weird. And then, you know, I think the studio saw the test and we're like, we're going to cancel this show. And the whole thing got scrapped after my audition. And then I booked a part on the Louis Guzman sitcom and there were two writers on that staff that I'm like, these guys are really, really funny. There's Chris Miller and Phil Lord. Oh, yeah.

Of course. So they went on to be pretty successful. And that got canceled after three episodes aired. And it was around then that Robin Glenn and I were thinking, you know, why wait? Why sit around and wait for another one of these? And then you don't even necessarily like what you're being given the opportunity to do. Why not just shoot something ourselves? And we were looking at the British office and how sort of cheap it looked.

It just seemed very handheld and very easy to shoot. And the lighting just seemed like they threw the lights on in an office and filmed it. Kerb had just come out around then and it felt the same. The Panasonic DVX 100A camera. Not that we were big camera guys, but somebody, Glenn or someone had stumbled upon this camera and it kind of looked like those shows, but it was an affordable camera. So that combination of a attainable look with an affordable camera. And we thought, well, we could shoot something.

There was no TikTok to just sort of throw it away on YouTube, I think had was just kind of coming onto the scene. We thought, well, let's let's shoot a pilot. And we made a terrible pilot, you know, but there was a thing in it. There was something in the in the spirit of it that we thought, OK, let's redo it. Because it cost us nothing and we had a lot of spare time. And then we said, well, let's shoot it again. We shot a second episode and we sort of handed that to our agents.

So we started going around town or they said, let's hook you up with a big producer. And we waited forever for someone to watch it. Nobody watched it. And while we were waiting, we shot a third episode and that third episode started to get pretty good. We started to find our voice and our timing and get a little bit better at how to use the camera. And it was the third episode that Rob had the his lack of patience was amazing and very

useful. He was like, I'm going to fire everyone unless we start getting meetings and they're like, OK, OK, we'll set up some meetings. And he took it around and pitched it. And we had an offer from VH1, I think, to rewrite it or maybe it was MTV. And we had an offer from FX to shoot a pilot with a real budget. By real budget, I mean like one tenth of what a television show is made for. But that was a hundred times more than what we were working for.

We shot that pilot. They picked it up. They said, we'll give you seven episodes. And then we did seven and then they were like, OK, we're going to cancel the show. But unless you can get a big name attached and Danny DeVito had seen the show and liked it. And then here we are. Still going.

That's fascinating to me that I mean, you hear stories about you need a big name. I always thought like it almost sounds apocryphal, like it's this thing from the 1940s or 50s. But it's true. Yeah, especially then, maybe less so now because there's so many different things that you could maybe launch something in and people just the buzz of it being a popular show on say Netflix. People might check it out. But then I think to to break through it all, yeah, if we hadn't gotten Danny, that would

have that would have been it. Now, how many seasons has it been now? This is going to blow my mind when you say it. We just shot the 16th season. That's unbelievable to me. And I think you've broken the record or tied the record for longest running multi-canon film sitcom. Is something like that?

We passed Ozzie and Harriet last year for the longest and they did about a thousand episodes. Oh, my God. We've done so many less, you know, we now are only doing 80 year. But you know, I think back then they were like, all right, get to work and you're going to do 50 of these, you know. But now, you know, so yes, for the longest running, we haven't done the most episodes and then cartoons like The Simpsons has been around forever.

I'm going to tell me about it. I left The Simpsons in 1993 and I remember thinking, well, this old horse has just about had it. So I'll just go do a late night show now. Were you at all thinking like, they'll never survive without me? Yeah. No, I'm deluded, but not that deluded. No, I knew that they survived very well, that they would survive very well without me and

probably be enhanced. But yeah, I left and remembered thinking like, well, this thing has now been chugging along for like six, seven seasons and it's an animated show and it's very labor intensive. How could it possibly continue cut to 30 years later? That's insane. 30 years. Do you think it's time for them to stop? Yes, I do.

Oh, no. I know. I know. I know. No, no. I only said that because I'm good friends with many people that still make it, so they know I don't feel that way. And by the way, this is really funny for me to go, yes, they should stop immediately.

Have they had enough episodes for the characters to have aged a year? If theoretically? Well, it's the beauty of it. Yeah, of course they have, right? 365 episodes? Yeah. Easily. They easily have.

But I mean, that's the conceit, right? They never get older. They never get older. They're just stuck in that thing. And Mr. Burns never remembers who Homer Simpson is. That's my other favorite. Simpson, hey! Yeah, that's funny.

And no one knows how old he is. These are, he saved your life, he once was in charge of the moon, he, you know, wherever. You transplanted your lungs into his once, he once adopted him, all these, that doesn't ring a bell, which is a great, great conceit. I would imagine we have, every joke we've done on our show, they've done on five times, like every version of jokes. Well, here's the thing is that, you know, it's funny because I used to think about this on late night because we were very determined to like, we want to make sure that we're doing

sketches that nobody's ever done before and stuff that's really completely out there that no one's thought of. And we tried really hard to do that. And as time goes on, I think you're not competing against other shows, you're competing against everyone in the world who has an iPhone. Oh, yeah. It's, it's very, very, very difficult to outwit all of humanity. Yeah, no, you can't.

You, I mean, we are, you and I are, which is nice. No, you and I can do it. Yeah, we can do it. But you're on our show. You know, we're like two gods on a cloud, drinking out of golden chalices, looking down at mortals, and we're trying to imagine what it's like for them. Yeah, yeah. We have a bigger platform, of course, but, uh, no, but I mean, it's kind of the point

where we can't, even ourselves, where we're like, oh my God, we've done that. Every time we break a story, we'll, we'll write it and we'll be, oh, we did this. We did completely this and we have to scrap it. You know, what's really, uh, fun is I love watching people 100% commit and this is something you do really well and the other cast members, but you commit, when you commit, it's something I believe in religiously, which is you have to go in 110%. When you lose your shit as Charlie Kelly, you go full, full out and, and I think that that's a quality of the show.

There's no restraint when it's time to go. It is complete meltdowns, complete insane meltdowns. Yeah. I don't want to feel as though I've left anything on the table. You have not. And honestly, this is going to sound like after BS, but I go into a like trance like I dilute myself and I'm gone and I'll come out of a scene and be like, I have no idea what I did.

I hope it was good. Yeah. And then I'll get in the editing room and be like, no, it wasn't, it wasn't, it wasn't, but that one was, that one was good. Sometimes I can't do that and I'm hyper aware of the camera guys here, the, the, the boom guy's got a cold. He's like, you know, you're aware, but sometimes you just black out and then, and just, I don't know, just kind of barf out of performance and, and it seems like vomit on the screen

and, and the audience loves it because they say that's real. There's a really weird thing I, you could probably relate to this, but there are a lot of things I can't do if it needs to be serious or sincere. Oh yeah. But if it's in the, in the name of comedy, I feel that I might be able, there are times where I've felt I might be able to break the world record for a mile if I thought it would make an audience full of people laugh. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Do you know what I mean? Of course. There are things you can do and obviously that is not the case, but there are times where that we did a tour in 2010 and you were probably there for this Sona, but we were in some venue and it was going really well and I was in the crowd and then I got up on the ledge and there's like a 30 foot drop into the audience. I remember. And I'm like on the ledge and like doing stick to make the crowd laugh.

Andy rightly was furious and he was just like, what the, what the fuck was that? You're like the Tom Cruise of comedy. You're going to die that way. Okay. But yeah, but it's, what I'm saying is I, I acknowledge I'm, you know, I don't want it to be a humble brag or a flex because I'm often afterwards realizing, oh, this is the sign of something that needs work. I'm seriously like, this is, this is, I'm a smart person and I have a wife and kids

and I love my family and relatives and I know better than to do that. Why did I do that? It's because I knew that the crowd is this happy hand high up, but if I can, I could not shut up a little higher if I stood up on the ledge, wouldn't that be cool? If you're Tom Cruise and you entertain people by doing death defying stunts, then potentially it's the same kind of thing where you just, that's how you communicate with people and you are doing it over and over again. I think for you and I, it's easier with comedy because that was probably a safe place for

you as a kid growing up. Oh yeah. You know, I couldn't do anything Tom Cruise does include run convincingly. You know, like that's the other thing too is, you know what I would love to do? I would love to do, this just reminds me of something I've really been itching to do and I'm just going to say it right now, but we've been shooting something for HBO Max where I travel around and meet up with fans, kind of a travel show idea and we were going to be, we shot one in Norway already and we knew that there was a possibility that Tom

Cruise would be in like the same area that we were in. And I've worked with him before and he was really great, very funny, played it perfectly, he was a joy to work with. But the idea is I want to shoot a segment where he teaches me how to run the way he runs in a movie because apparently there's a whole technique to it because it's very back straight, arms are pointy and if you don't do it exactly right, you look like a fool and what I've always thought is I'd really like really good cameras like him to run and then I would like to run the way I run and not trying to be funny, just run

the way a six foot four, not very athletic man my age runs and run but with the real cameras and stuff and then put the music to it and I think it would be one of the funniest things. I'd say go get that bear and just set the bear loose and you will run very convincingly. I will run very convincingly. It's funny the bear, everyone was like, what if the bear had bitten me or something when I, I forgot it was my hand or my head or whatever but I shoved something in the bear's mouth and I think the bear just recoiled at my neediness and I saw the bear backstage talking

to other bears like, it just comes from a bad place. The needy ones do not taste bad. You can tell he's a middle child. A full of cortisol and it just makes the muscles all sinewy. You know when someone's really needy and makes the meat taste better, oh no it makes the meat bad, it makes the meat bad, good, good. Fat and happy is how you want them but I don't know why the bears are smoking in my eyes but the needy ones they are.

Of course they are. It's like a sour grape. What was it like for you to go from you're making this very handheld, like it's a mon posh shop and you're making your comedy and then you get into something like Pacific Rim which is one of those movies where I can't even imagine because I can relate to you in the world of, it's always sunny in Philadelphia and then when I think about and even playing a comedic role in a movie but when I think about you in something like when that first Pacific Rim came out and you realize, oh my God it's such a good movie and you realize

that you're part of an apparatus that is so massive and you are, it's the complete other end of the spectrum from the kind of work that you were doing and you did it really well. Oh, thank you. Well, I think I was lucky that I got to have that transition working with Guillermo del Toro. So as massive as that movie was, he has a way of working that makes it feel super personal and specific.

I had some green screen work but most of the things that I was doing he had built some kind of practical prop that was animatronic that I was reacting to so it wasn't quite like getting stuck into the Star Wars remakes where it was just all green screen. Right, you're always acting to a green sock or a green tennis ball. And Guillermo had a very specific way of working, I was a huge fan so I just wanted to do a good job for him and I still admire him so much and look up to him a lot but in the beginning of the film he was saying, he's like, I want you to do what I never do this, I want you to be loose and out of control and wild and messy.

And by the end of the filming it was like, on take one, your hand was here, on take two, it was here. But that's just, I mean, I really enjoyed getting to work within his parameters. Sure, yeah. Every now and then I'd be doing a take and he wouldn't be liking what I was doing, he'd be telling me what to do and I'd be thinking, oh boy, I'm not giving him what he wants and then I would throw it away and just do whatever I wanted and be like, yes, like that, you know, which is always sort of the case that you have to make it your own.

But it was eye-opening, just the way he used the camera and I'm a big movie nerd so I was just geeking out on his techniques. He was saying, he was like, I like to scratch the lens for the CGI shot, I'm like, scratch the lens, he's like, I want you to see, maybe it's wrong to do an impersonation of him every time. But he was saying, I want you to see something imperfect before you see the perfection of CGI. The way his mind was working, I was just eating it all up and then I would go back to Sunny

and we'd be shooting. I remember we did a episode where we're in a police station and it's a flashback and we're talking about this wedding massacre that happened where people were high on bath salts and I was saying, okay, when we shoot it, you know, we'll do the coverage that Richie Keane, great director, had sort of blocked out but I said, hey, Richie, after we get that, can we do a few Guillermo takes and just circle the camera around the actors and just started using more, as I would call them, Guillermo takes throughout the show and just getting more and more inspired to do more filming and make more things.

The only thing that would be dangerous there is I know that in a comedy environment, you can take shit for that, like you just came back from your Guillermo del Toro blockbuster and you're back with your friends and you're like, you know what we did on Pacific Rim, you know, and then suddenly you're right back on Rhode Island. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Movie style.

Yeah. I think it's a kaiju. Yeah. Yeah, exactly. Fortunately, I think Rob and Glenn, our relationship is not like that, so, you know, pretty much best idea wins in a pretty open environment for let's try all sorts of things, so everyone was game for it. Yeah, because I got to see your movie Fool's Paradise and I know it's coming out in May

12th. May 12th. Okay. Only in theaters. Only in theaters, as it should be. It's time. It's time for America to join again in the cathedral that is a theater better than a real cathedral because we're going to have that God talk.

Yeah. We could do some God talk before the movie if you'd like. If you like, of course, it's all up to what you want to do. Praise the Lord. Yeah. Have some popcorn. Put your feet off the seat. Turn off your fucking phone.

But I saw your movie Fool's Paradise and I really loved it. I really love your film and I love you in it and you wrote this movie and you directed it. It's very sweet. You guys haven't seen it yet because I just got this advanced copy that I watched, but it is very much evocative to me of Chaplin, Buster Keaton. It's got a real sweetness to it. Your character is you're doing that same thing Chaplin did out of necessity and then Harpo

Marx did, which is you're not saying a word and you're very expressive and you really are playing this person who is picked up by the Hollywood machine and you're at the very center of it and you're very passive. It's a little bit like being there. And being there, I think was my initial, okay, could I make a movie like being there? No one's going to do that anymore. I guess I'll just do it myself. And then when I realized it's not totally working, I said, okay, can I combine it with

Broadway Danny Rose where I have this sort of sad sack guy? And that only then was able to sort of land the plane. Your character is so content in his own, I will say one thing, he's so content in his own space that at one point he's at a Hollywood party and he doesn't say anything. He's very much a Chaplin-esque kind of character and he falls into the pool accidentally and can't swim. He just sinks to the bottom and his hat just settles on his head and he's just sitting at the bottom of the pool, making no effort to, and I thought, this is such a great example

of how little this character wants or needs and how passive he is. And you're just sitting there when another character comes in and saves you, but had that character not come in, he would have stayed there till you died. The movie would have ended there, which could have been an interesting film, just too short. But yeah, yeah, did an extremely passive character and then there's some justification, which is that we meet him in a mental institution and the idea is that he suffered some sort of trauma and we don't know what and he has almost like the mind of a child and there's another doctor there who says, well, if we give him enough sort of exposure therapy and

maybe if he has a meaningful connection with another person, he can sort of break free from this sort of regressive psychosis that he's in, but it's going to be a lot of work and it's going to be a lot of effort and a lot of time. And the other doctor says, okay, well, what's our first course of action? And the guy says, well, the state's not going to pay for any of that. So we're going to put his ass in the first bus down, down. And then, what's they do? What's they do?

And then the movie begins. And it's funny too, because you're parodying Hollywood and the Hollywood you're making fun of, they're making pictures and they're making them almost the way they did in the movies, but it takes place in the current times. Yeah, sort of a heightened thing. Yeah, it's really fun. Where I thought, okay, I could just set it now, but in some ways now is not enough to satirize Hollywood.

Can I make it almost feel as though it's satirizing Hollywood through the ages? Yeah. There's also a great part where your character is invited on a talk show and you've made a generic talk show, and of course, I'm watching it as me, and I'm watching these two idiots laughing like hyenas that bring you out and just find everything funny. And there's part of me that thought, yeah, that's kind of, it's done with love. It's done with love. No, no, but it's also, it's just, it's parodying every type of show like that.

So it's not specific, but it was really, that part was really making me howl, because it's so over the top. It's a good performance by Jimmy Simpson for the Lance Barber, yeah. I think initially I wanted to see if I could go on a few talk shows and shoot it like that. And then ultimately I felt as though stylistically would take you out and then would take you out of the movie to have like a real world person going back and forth between these fictional characters. Right, also, I mean, a lot of movies do that where the character, you know, I taped in

the number in my day and then you see it all the time. And I always thought it was something I never loved doing, which was when the character in the movie briefly stops off at a talk show and I'm there saying, so you mean to say that you think there could be life on another planet? And then it shows up in the movie theater and it just always felt a little lame. Whereas creating a fake talk show, I thought was much funnier. Thank you. I started to make a talk show, then you would think because there's no idea to make a fake

one. I'd make a fake one. Yeah, because the sets are big and the audience is big and I didn't have the time or the budget to do that. So it's actually only a curtain and and then the stage itself. Right. There is no audience there. The spoiler alert.

Cut that. Cut that. That's called the laugh track. Yeah. Yeah, yeah. And a laugh track. Yeah, that's right. I'm a huge fan and I love your approach, which is you're trying to make people laugh.

It's interesting when you take it back to its core, you know, have some type of people say like, what are you? Are you a satirist or a humorist? And I think if you really take it down to the core, I think I might be a clown. And that might just be the simplest way to put it. And then you can dress it up and if someone at the New York Times likes you, they call you something else. It sounds a little fancier, but at the core, I'm still, it's the same impulse that I was

using on a playground in Brookline Mass in 1974. Do you ever feel challenged by it as if, I often think, OK, am I going, am I making too many jokes? Are there too many jokes within this movie? Do I have to be more serious? Do I, I mean, there are heartfelt moments in the movie, but I also undercut it frequently. Yeah, no, I think it's really well-paced. That was my feeling, is that it's really well-paced and yeah, I think, yes, there are times where

I look at stuff I've done and we're in edit and I'm just like, shut up. I mean, I'm saying it to myself. I'm like, shut up. Right. There's too much. Too many jokes. Too many jokes and you're, you know, let's just, and really sometimes the best things happen during quiet moments, which took me a while to realize, unfortunately, I realized

it, I think, fairly early on, but that sometimes saying very little and letting someone else talk and just reacting to them naturally is much funnier than anything I'm going to come up with. I've got a whole movie of that. Yeah. Yeah. Exactly. Yeah.

I find like when I'm writing something, I wrote another movie in the time that I was sort of in the edit room on this and was passing it to some friends and they were saying, you know, like, you should make it less funny. And, you know, because they like the story and they said, you could get more serious and I know that's the right direction and I'll sit within and I'll do it, but my first instinct always is just don't people want to sit in a theater and just laugh and laugh and laugh and laugh. But sometimes to get them to laugh, you have to pull a few jokes out so that the last land.

Right. No, it's true. I think that's true. What I don't want to do is make people think. Oh, you don't. I really don't. I don't either because I don't know how to do that. I've heard that before.

Like, you know, not only did he make you laugh, he made you think and I go, yeah, lose that second part. Yeah. Lose that part. I want. I want people to be dumber after they've seen my work. Yeah. Yeah.

I think I do too. Yeah. I think I do too. Well, this is an absolute joy, Charlie, as I said, coming, you know, just looking forward to talking to you and it's been a little while and I love that you're doing this work. I mean, Fool's Paradise is coming out May 12th, May 12th. And also, you're in the biggest movie in the world. True.

Right now. True. It just made, what did it make? It made $8 billion. It made $8 billion of those little coins that Mario hits. Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah. Just bashed into 8 billion bricks. Their hands are just bloody.

Yeah. Yeah. The Super Mario Brothers movie. That is congratulations. Thanks. That's crazy. It's been a crazy ride. Just as long as you have a piece of the merchandising, you should be fine.

Bad news, pal. I got some bad news for you. Yeah, yeah, yeah. They paid me with video game coins. Yeah, yeah. But they make such a fun sound when they rain down. That's how they got me. That's how they got me.

Well, Charlie, continued success as if you needed it, but you will have it and you deserve it. So thank you for being here. Well, thank you. I'm really, it means the world to me that you like the movie because I do feel like you're my target audience, which is to say, like, I want like a Conan or Brian to like this because if the top of the comedy guys like it, then it's up to the standard that I hope it would be up to.

That is really nice. So you just say. Back at you. So thank you. All right. Good night. All right. See you.

Good night. Good night. Good night. Good night. Good night. Good night. Good night. Good night.

Good night. Good night. Let's get back into the voice mail. Time to listen to what the fans are thinking. Yeah, hit me, Conan, Sonal and Matt. This is Brian Permind from New York. I'm sitting here, mining my own business, doing some work in listening to your podcast actually where I get a text from my wife who tells me that she just walked by Conan O'Brien

on the streets of New York City on the Upper West Side. She smiled at you and you said, Hey. First of all, amazing coincidence. But second of all, do I need to be worried. Let me know. Oh. Oh, worried? I remember this encounter very well,

and yes, Brian, you do need to be married. You devil. Because I had an immediate connection. Really? With this woman, yeah. Oh, nice. And things are moving quickly. That's all I'll say.

What about your wife? What about my wife? Hey. You know? What about, hey, I'm not dead. Is that what you say when you're like spitting game? You're like, hey. I'll go like, hey.

Yeah. Really? Yeah, a lot of times I tap women on the shoulder and they turn around and I go, hey. That doesn't go over well. Yeah. Yeah. And sometimes I'm wearing a Halloween mask.

None of it goes. Of your fates? No, it's always Nixon. And I go, hey there. I'm Nixon. No, I don't, I do, I think I'm a genial, well, you've been with me a lot. I'm very genial to people on the street.

And if someone recognizes me and smiles or something, I'll go, hi, you know, hey. You're very, you're really nice. I hope that this woman in question didn't feel in any way that I was stepping over the line. I don't think I was. He would have mentioned that. Maybe she was reciprocating in his kind of thinking of you

and dreaming of you, you know? Well, I don't think so. Why? Just going off of past experience. Come on. No, I would say I like chatting with people and I like talking to people. And so I'm the complete opposite of someone

who might be recognizable, who would feel like there's time and space was being invaded. I'm the exact opposite of that person. And you walk everywhere when you're in New York. So you're, and you're, I don't know, you're very recognizable. And it's in New York.

It's like you, you really, I feel like a walk that would take anybody else five minutes takes you like an hour. Why? Because you're saying hi to everyone. I do say hi to a lot of people. And you're chilling and you're taking pictures. Anybody who asks, anybody who asks to take a picture

with you, you will take a picture. So if you see Conan, ask him to take a picture. Oh, I had someone that asked me recently. They said, they had just met me and we were chatting for a second. They said, how come you're so like kind of, you know, you seem kind of humble and down to earth. And I said, a lot of self-hate.

And the person, that's what I said. I said, oh, I think a lot of self-hate. And the person went, I get that. Oh, yes. No, no, no, I'm kind of kidding. Kind of kidding. But anyway, that's nice. I was walking in New York City

with Mr. Adam Sacks, remember? And we were walking together and you saw a post on like Dumois seconds afterwards. You want to lean in and tell this? We were walking together. We were in New York City doing some, had some meeting or something. And then we're walking up right past Rockefeller Center.

Yeah. And then someone texted me like an Instagram post from Dumois that was like a picture of me and you together. And it was like Conan and his intern walking through New York City. Aw. Intern Adam. Yeah, yeah.

Conan with his 13-year-old nephew. Were you going him to New York City? Go get us some coax. Sure, yeah. Whatever you want. Go get us some cookies. Yeah, that is a funny thing now is people can kind of just keep tabs on you because there are all these websites

that say, you know, I just, whatever, Conan or whoever, eating a cob salad. It doesn't even have to be interesting. It's just eating a cob salad. I know. And you think, okay, this is going to make it very difficult for me to murder because there's going to be a trail. Do you already have a victim in mind?

Yes, I do. Is it in this room, this victim? Can't say. Cannot say. Okay. But anyway, sleep tight tonight. Sleep very well. I think it's just going to be hard for you to

fix that second floor window in the kitchen. Oh my God. First we got to get a second story. Damn it, I had the wrong house. I've been menacing the wrong people. But yes, well, O'Brien, you do not need to worry. And I think I am no threat. Okay.

But my best to you and your, does anyone say, did he mention her name? No. No. Well, I'll just have to say, lady, you're a lady. Hmm, you just lost her. She's gone. Yeah.

Well, I hope we cleared that up. We did. Good job, everybody. Good job and Brian, my best to you and your lady. You got her back. Conan O'Brien needs a friend. With Conan O'Brien, Sonam of Sessian and Matt Gorely. Produced by me, Matt Gorely.

Executive produced by Adam Sacks, Nick Leow and Jeff Ross at Team Coco and Colin Anderson and Cody Fisher at Year Wolf. Theme song by the White Stripes. Incidental music by Jimmy Vivino. Take it away, Jimmy. Our supervising producer is Aaron Blair and our associate talent producer is Jennifer Samples.

Engineering by Eduardo Perez. Additional production support by Mars Melnick. Talent booking by Paula Davis, Gina Batista and Brick Kahn. You can rate and review this show on Apple Podcasts and you might find your review read on a future episode. Got a question for Conan? Call the Team Coco hotline at 323-451-2821 and leave a message.

It too could be featured on a future episode. And if you haven't already, please subscribe to Conan O'Brien Needs a Friend on Apple Podcasts, Stitcher or wherever fine podcasts are downloaded. This has been a Team Coco production in association with Ear Wolf.